Alright, ya’ll – good news for student visitors: In December 2018 after final exams are all done and grades posted, I will finally be able to post up some more essays. ‘Cause I’m baa-aaack!

As intro or re-intro depending on who you are: My background is over 30 years in ministry (music director, programming, volunteer management) with an overlap of the first 18 years in contract law as a legal assistant/office manager followed by the balance in nonprofit office management, finances (bookkeeping, fundraising), more programming and volunteer management. I sum it all up as follows: “I’m a professional cat herder who is nice for a living.”

From my website stats, I can see that most of you are students who visit my page for the writing samples I post.

It wasn’t a given that my age group would automatically go to college.

In the early 1980s, you went to trade or tech school.

College was encouraged only for those going into a “profession” which was mostly defined as lawyer, accountant, teacher or doctor. I guess they figured the rest of use just needed to get a job or get married and start a family. Times quickly changed, however, but I was happy working and didn’t have time to take more in-person classes back then.

So, life happened. A few years after the financial meltdown of ’08, I had a lot of time on my hands and decided to jump back into the academic game since I no longer was forced to “go” to college some hour or more away; I could take my coursework online. Where the H was that when I wanted it in the early 80’s?? I’d have three doctorates by now.

When I took my two existing 1980s Certificates and zipped through to my AA, I no sooner finished that when I went down for the count during 2015 to go through chemo. It’s taken two and a half years since early 2016 to get my brain back to where I felt I could continue academic pursuit at my expected 4.0 level.

Thanks to a Statistics course I’m nearing the finish line with, the brain is back. In January 2019, my course load will be a full 18 credits, so I’m going through like a rhino to finish up with a BAS in management. By this time next year, I will have submitted my application to begin my Master’s.

I love taking courses online where I work on them when my brain is at its most energetic with my dog nestled by my toes. Since online student interaction is via discussion board, I have watched in horror how few people know how to compose sentences, much less write simple essays or up-to-snuff academic papers. That is assuming classmates have even done the required reading to post an intelligible thought on the topic at hand, but that’s a rant for a different day.

Here’s the thing: good writing is required not just for your high school and college classes.

You need to be able to write a persuasive argument to sway your readers toward where you want to steer them whether you are going into law school or you are an online entrepreneur who has to come up with copy and content for your website.

Was this big enough emphasis? That’s why I share my “best papers” when the semester is done.

Be warned, however, that you need to think on your own, make your own opinions about everything you read and THEN compose your own original essays, articles, research papers and content. You should all have the obligatory reference book on how to properly cite from works you are quoting or relying upon to support your opinion or arguments. My little site here is very deeply entrenched in the college searches and they will know if you blatantly “steal” thoughts off the internet and pose them as your own without giving proper credit.

Think of yourself as a news reporter as you are starting to write and all of your online research is quotes from people you have just interviewed for their viewpoints.

There is no need to quote absolutely everything when you can more easily paraphrase for the gist of it. Just don’t be stupid and forget to give credit to the original source for whatever idea you are borrowing. If you keep that in mind, you should be fine.

As a heads up, some of the essays from discussion boards and drop boxes that will be coming next month are from Business Law and Social Media Marketing courses for you guys.